Make Payments on Your Debt Whenever You Can

By glblguy

Leo Babauta ofZen Habits published a guest post over on Get Rich Slowly since J.D. is on vacation. Leo’s post is about eliminating debt using large bursts instead of paying off debt gradually. Now of course the best way is to do both. Leo’s article has some great ideas and is something everyone working on getting out of debt (or trying to save) should read.

Whenever I get unexpected money, I take the check to the bank and deposit it. I then login to online banking and make a payment against my debt in the same amount. I’ve made 3 payments against my Chase Credit Card already this month.

Recently we’ve received checks for: Insurance Dividends, Insurance Refund for overpayment, refund on our unused camper storage, and a few other items. Total amount was around $100, and all of it went towards paying off my Chase Credit Card.

My wife and I have been recently looking for opportunities to use extra money to pay on our debt including using spare change, selling items on eBay, buying stuff dirt cheap at auctions and selling it on eBay, having a garage sale, etc. Anything we can think of to generate extra income or find extra money we’re doing.

Commenting on my recent Ask the Readers post, Ron posted the following comment:

Here is something I have been doing for years. I save change left over from the day just like many other readers do, I’m sure. But I also save my dollar bills.

The key to this (so it becomes less noticeable) is to spend your day to day cash normally. Don’t save back your dollar bills during the day. If something costs 50 cents, break the dollar. If you end up with no singles at the end of the day, oh well. But if you do, save them back. When I get around $50 or so, I deposit it in my online savings account.

I’ve never tracked this but I estimate I’ve saved several hundred dollars a year doing this and I never miss it.

This is a great tip, and something I started doing this week.

What creative things are you doing to pay off your debt or save money faster?

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I just wanted to comment on saving day to day change and singles. I started to do that in December, never touched any of it, and July 16th we took it to the bank for our vacation fund, and it came out to be $694. We were amazed that in relatively a short amount of time to have so much saved. But it works.

Making additional payments is a great tip because you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars in the long term. Like you I try to make additional payments where possible especially on my mortgage and credit cards even if they are only small amounts.